Nevius: Giants' Mac Williamson finally out of the darkness

Mac Williamson didn’t see it coming.

“I had a panic attack on the team plane,” he said. “It was weird because I never had an issue on the plane.”

Sitting next to him, Chris Stratton immediately realized two things: his friend was in distress, and the flight to Atlanta was five hours.

“He knew I was messed up,” Williamson said at FanFest media day.

“It was,” said Stratton, “an eye-opening experience.”

Stratton helped calm Williamson down so he could doze off. The Giants outfielder wasn’t sure what was going on, but he’d found that sleep was the one thing that made him feel better.

At that point, Williamson estimates he was sleeping 10-14 hours a day.

You probably know the shorthand story of Mac Williamson. Came up from the minors last April. Hit three home runs in five games. Got everyone excited. Ran into a wall six days after he arrived.

Had a concussion. It lingered. Was sent to the minors and never made it back. Stopped playing in August. It was said there were some “complications from the concussion.”

That doesn’t begin to describe it.

Most of us first heard about Williamson’s struggles from a public blog written by his girlfriend, Kaitlyn Watts. It was titled: “Dealing with Mac’s Concussion.”

“I’ve watched him suffer and tried to do everything in my power to help him feel better, but … nothing seemed to make him feel better,” Watts wrote.

Besides spending half the day asleep in a dark room, Watts said Williamson was unable to sit up without experiencing overpowering nausea. Too sick to eat, he lost 20-25 pounds.

There were mood swings.

“I would be upset one minute, and crying the next,” Williamson said at FanFest. “And I’d think, ‘Why was I so mad?’”

Oh, and by the way, he was missing the opportunity of a lifetime. The 27-year-old outfielder had not only reached the big leagues, he was thriving. Before he was hurt, there was talk that Williamson might be - finally - the young, power-hitting left fielder the Giants have been waiting for since Barry Bonds.

Watching Williamson’s April 24 collision with the wall on YouTube is sickening. Bryce Harper hits a low foul ball to the third-base side and Williamson - only a week up from the minors and hustling to make an impression - goes after it in a dead sprint.

Focused on the ball, he loses sight of the bullpen mounds in foul territory. When he hits the nearest one, his legs are taken out and he falls head first.

It is so abrupt he’s unprepared. He can’t even get his arms up to soften the collision. He pile-drives into the padded wall.

There’s a pause while Williamson stays down, hands on his head. But then he pulls on his hat, shakily gets to his feet and goes back to left field to a round of applause.

The next inning he jumps on the first pitch he sees and clocks a 424-foot home run over the center-field wall.

On TV, Duane Kuiper says, “I think he’s fine.”

Who wouldn’t have said that?

“I just hit the home run,” Williamson said. “I was like, ‘Well, shoot, I can’t do or say anything now.,”

Williamson soldiered through. This was his big-league ?chance. But he wasn’t right. He was sick to his stomach and his vision was out of whack.

“I had to sit out the third game (after the collision),” he said. “I felt like I was going to die.”

The Giants put him on the seven-day injured list. Then they gave him seven more days.

“It was like: Give it some rest and we will check it out tomorrow,” he said. “But then tomorrow came and it wasn’t any better.”

At this point we have to call out the Giants. Baseball has always taken a rub-a-little-dirt-on-it approach to injuries. But c’mon, we’re past the days of “he got his bell rung.” This was a player with a debilitating medical condition and it doesn’t seem like he got much help from his employer.

Looking for answers, Williams went to second baseman Joe Panik, who had a serious concussion in 2016.

“With a concussion, you look 100 percent fine,” Panik said. “Where if you break an ankle, you’re walking around in a boot.”

Panik said when he came back (too soon), he was only swinging at fastballs because he couldn’t track the breaking stuff. He also he had problems with pop-ups.

He recalled going after a ball that was over his shoulder. He thought he had a bead on it, but when it landed, “it wasn’t where I thought it would be.”

It was reassuring for Williamson to know his symptoms were typical, but he was dealing with the ruthless reality of professional sports. When management says, “a player’s greatest ability is availability,” it also means, “Come on, can’t you play through this?’

After 27 days, Williamson was back in the lineup.

It wasn’t pretty. He hit a home run on June 14, but he was flailing at the plate and in the field.

“I was running in on balls hit over my head,” he said. “I shouldn’t have come back when I did. It’s just that the longer you’re out …”

On June 23, he was sent to the minors. By August, it was clear he wasn’t right and he called off the rest of the 2018 season.

“I was just like … is this going to be the new Mac?” Watts wrote. “Is this the way he’s going to be forever?”

And here is where the story takes an unexpected turn toward sunshine. Williamson went to see Dr. Micky Collins, director of the concussion program at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.

In concussion circles, Collins is a rock star. Hockey MVP Sidney Crosby and NASCAR champion Dale Earnhardt Jr. are former patients.

Symptoms began to decrease after Williamson’s first visit. And after the second there was definite and dramatic progress. By September, he was starting to feel normal.

He says he’s regained the weight, feels great and has been penciled in on some scorecards as the left fielder this year. That would be remarkable.

Now, those of us in the media are not supposed to root for individual players. This year I’m making an exception. And I’d like to suggest that, if you’re at a game, you give Mac Williamson a little extra encouragement.

It’s been a long year.

Contact C.W. Nevius at cw.nevius@pressdemocrat.com. Twitter: @cwnevius